Post by Duane on May 20, 2022 8:02:10 GMT -5
Last time, on “Tales of the Beleaguered Wrestler:” just days before her first match under the hood as Nocturne, Stephanie Johnson flees Cincinnati after going against a promoter’s wishes to change a standard wrestling match into something…a little more sordid. Said promoter and his champion nearly wreck Stephanie off the road in a fit of road rage, and it’s only due to defensive driving courses she was forced to take when younger that she is able to hold them off long enough for the Ohio State Police to take up the chase.
Six weeks have passed since then, and Stephanie receives another call that her services as Nocturne are required in Chicago this time. What twists await her in the Windy City?
Chicago was never a place Stephanie Johnson felt comfortable in. Never mind that she grew up near St. Louis and as such was used to the larger cities. Chicago just always felt different to her. Might be the people, might be the weather, might even be the fact that she remained a steadfast St. Louis Cardinals fan, the bane of Cubs fans the nation over. Point is, every time she had to set foot in the so-called Second City, she never felt at ease. The incident in Cincinnati a month and a half ago was still fresh in her mind, too. Sure, she had seen some offers disappear after she did what she did. But those had been replaced by other offers, more lucrative offers from less seedy promoters and word had gotten around that while she was professional, she still wouldn’t simply be a pushover in the backstage area. All in all, not bad for someone still “paying her dues” in the sport, even with the training pedigree she possessed.
It was this train of thought that occupied her mind as she crossed the city limits proper for Chicago, and she forced herself to pay closer focus to the highway. City driving was hard enough, with the increased traffic, lack of escape avenues, and idiot pedestrians to account for, without her brain spinning in circles in the process. It took about an hour, mainly due to the pre-lunch traffic, for her to get to where she was going—a warehouse that had been converted for an evening to house a wrestling show.
It took her twenty minutes beyond that to wonder why she even agreed to this appearance.
While she wasn’t the most gifted in the air, she felt more at home in a fast-paced match. This was part of the reason she was pegged to be one of the Nocturne Collective, after all. But how in the world was she supposed to stick to the gimmick they wanted to give her for this one-off, still go through the match somehow, and still have her self-respect at the end of it? How did they expect a relative newcomer on the scene, one who tended more towards faster action, to play a zombie? No, not one of the more agile ones that had been becoming more common in movies, but the old, shuffling, “braaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnns” type zombie? How was that supposed to be taken as a credible threat in the wrestling ring?
Even if there were about a dozen people doing the same gimmick at once, anyone with some smarts could just simply keep away from the shuffling horde! It wasn’t rocket science, for crying out loud!
Her internal monologue and rant continued for about a half hour before the promoter came running up to her, eyes widened in a slight panic. “Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid they’d sent you back to makeup already. Someone gave you bad information, Miss Johnson.”
”Come again?”
“You’re not supposed to be one of the zombies. You’re supposed to be in a Night of the Living Dead match where the zombies are lumberjacks, against our resident priest.”
That didn’t sound much better at first, but Stephanie gave it a few seconds to percolate. “So…wait. I want to make sure I understand what’s expected of me here. This is a lumberjack match. With zombies. Against a priest. Do I at least get to be an elf maiden warrior or something?”
“Not fantasy, I’m afraid. The guy’s literally an ordained Methodist preacher.”
That took a sudden turn into left field. “Damn. Way to ruin a good thought,” she laughed. “All right, so zombies as lumberjacks. How do we get to this point?”
“Part of the build we’re working towards next month’s big show. The priest against the cult leader, who has been making these zombies to terrorize the promotion in general. They’re usually local actors or stuntpeople but occasionally we’ll get someone on the roster under heavy makeup and no one’s the wiser. Anyway, you’re here as a person just passing through, looking for a good match as is your nature, the cult leader shows up, lights go out, when they’re back on the zombies have surrounded the ring. Standard lumberjack fare follows with the priest winning in the end.”
“I’m afraid to even ask, but am I supposed to be ‘eaten’ by the zombies by the end of this?”
“God, no! That’s too campy even for me. No, the priest will seemingly call upon God to smite the undead—though not explicitly doing so because that’s too close to blasphemy for his taste—a bright flash, they all fall down, and the priest charges out of the ring to go after the cultist. It’ll be right before intermission so you’ll be able to leave without any of the ‘zombies’ interacting with you post-match before you get back behind the curtain.”
There was another pause as she absorbed this. “Okay. I think I can work with that. Long as we get to have a decent match out of it, and the occasional lumber-zombie spots, it’ll go over. All right, point me in the direction of my opponent and we’ll start putting something together.”
To her credit, the match did end up being passable, if largely forgettable despite the poor acting abilities of the zombies at ringside. She left the warehouse four hundred dollars richer that night, and headed towards the northern suburbs. A friend was letting her crash at her place for a week until she was needed by Level Up, and a week in one spot could give her a couple more gigs besides if they came on short notice.
The grind continues, ever so slowly. Least this time I’ll be able to leave the city and not be wrecked on the way out!
Her last thought was that for as wacky as some of the Level Up roster were, at least zombies weren’t on their radar…not yet, anyway, and she prayed they’d never make an appearance at all.
There is nothing fancy about the promo video this week, just Nocturne standing in front of a plain wall, looking at the camera and speaking. Nocturne Prime she isn’t, after all.
”When I was told that Nocturne would be facing someone who made their Level Up debut at DOOM, Catalina Cortes was the last person I would have guessed out of all those who debuted to fill that role.
“You see, Catalina came in as the top woman of a long-dead company. That means precisely bupkiss in Level Up. I know that’s rich coming from a persona with a whole two wins in over a year in this company, you don’t have to roll your eyes at me and tell me this. Point is, we’ve been here busting our collective asses trying to achieve some sort of success in this place. What exactly has Catalina done since Carnage closed shop?
“So she came back as the most inept guest official ever in a match celebrating a dead promotion, that also featured someone else not in Level Up in the match, a wrestler who actually is, and a couple of wrestling legends on commentary…I know, I know. ‘Why are you throwing shade at the man who revealed himself as the Developer, as well as the man who ran the school you trained at?’ Tell me where I said anything disparaging about Trent Steel and Will Prydor in that last sentence. I’ll wait.
“No? Satisfied? Good. Now where was…oh, yeah. DOOM. So given the speed in which she tried to make her initial ten-count, her blindness at allowing weapons to be used, her blatant bias to decide suddenly that rope breaks were actually allowed, and the fact that she came to the ring carrying that dead promotion’s title belt like some sort of meaningful trophy in 2022, it occurred to me that Catalina Cortes was a little off on her calendar. She must have thought that Dia de los Muertos came in May, not November. Why else would she be showing up like a zombie from the grave to celebrate a company she seemed to not care much about save for the title and glory she could get from it?
“It’s time for a reality check, Miss Cortes. Being an official inside that ring is a far cry from actually competing. And while the Nocturne Collective may not be the most successful bunch in Level Up, we make damn sure that you’re going to work for the privilege of beating us. Ask Jack Sullivan how much of a fight she got at the hands of someone she expected to beat easily. Ask anyone who’s had to face one of us in the ring, and they’ll tell you that there’s more to us that you might think. We will not go quietly into that good night. You’re going to have to do more than just simply show up to collect a paycheck if you want your hand raised at the end of the night, Miss Cortes.
“I’m just left to wonder—do you even care that much to make an effort, or are you just going to coast on the coattails of a promotion dead and gone, and let that take you back into the obscurity from which you’ve lived this last year?”
Six weeks have passed since then, and Stephanie receives another call that her services as Nocturne are required in Chicago this time. What twists await her in the Windy City?
** ~~ ** ~~ ** ~~ **
Chicago, Illinois
May 13, 2022, 11:20 a.m.
Chicago was never a place Stephanie Johnson felt comfortable in. Never mind that she grew up near St. Louis and as such was used to the larger cities. Chicago just always felt different to her. Might be the people, might be the weather, might even be the fact that she remained a steadfast St. Louis Cardinals fan, the bane of Cubs fans the nation over. Point is, every time she had to set foot in the so-called Second City, she never felt at ease. The incident in Cincinnati a month and a half ago was still fresh in her mind, too. Sure, she had seen some offers disappear after she did what she did. But those had been replaced by other offers, more lucrative offers from less seedy promoters and word had gotten around that while she was professional, she still wouldn’t simply be a pushover in the backstage area. All in all, not bad for someone still “paying her dues” in the sport, even with the training pedigree she possessed.
It was this train of thought that occupied her mind as she crossed the city limits proper for Chicago, and she forced herself to pay closer focus to the highway. City driving was hard enough, with the increased traffic, lack of escape avenues, and idiot pedestrians to account for, without her brain spinning in circles in the process. It took about an hour, mainly due to the pre-lunch traffic, for her to get to where she was going—a warehouse that had been converted for an evening to house a wrestling show.
It took her twenty minutes beyond that to wonder why she even agreed to this appearance.
While she wasn’t the most gifted in the air, she felt more at home in a fast-paced match. This was part of the reason she was pegged to be one of the Nocturne Collective, after all. But how in the world was she supposed to stick to the gimmick they wanted to give her for this one-off, still go through the match somehow, and still have her self-respect at the end of it? How did they expect a relative newcomer on the scene, one who tended more towards faster action, to play a zombie? No, not one of the more agile ones that had been becoming more common in movies, but the old, shuffling, “braaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnns” type zombie? How was that supposed to be taken as a credible threat in the wrestling ring?
Even if there were about a dozen people doing the same gimmick at once, anyone with some smarts could just simply keep away from the shuffling horde! It wasn’t rocket science, for crying out loud!
Her internal monologue and rant continued for about a half hour before the promoter came running up to her, eyes widened in a slight panic. “Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid they’d sent you back to makeup already. Someone gave you bad information, Miss Johnson.”
”Come again?”
“You’re not supposed to be one of the zombies. You’re supposed to be in a Night of the Living Dead match where the zombies are lumberjacks, against our resident priest.”
That didn’t sound much better at first, but Stephanie gave it a few seconds to percolate. “So…wait. I want to make sure I understand what’s expected of me here. This is a lumberjack match. With zombies. Against a priest. Do I at least get to be an elf maiden warrior or something?”
“Not fantasy, I’m afraid. The guy’s literally an ordained Methodist preacher.”
That took a sudden turn into left field. “Damn. Way to ruin a good thought,” she laughed. “All right, so zombies as lumberjacks. How do we get to this point?”
“Part of the build we’re working towards next month’s big show. The priest against the cult leader, who has been making these zombies to terrorize the promotion in general. They’re usually local actors or stuntpeople but occasionally we’ll get someone on the roster under heavy makeup and no one’s the wiser. Anyway, you’re here as a person just passing through, looking for a good match as is your nature, the cult leader shows up, lights go out, when they’re back on the zombies have surrounded the ring. Standard lumberjack fare follows with the priest winning in the end.”
“I’m afraid to even ask, but am I supposed to be ‘eaten’ by the zombies by the end of this?”
“God, no! That’s too campy even for me. No, the priest will seemingly call upon God to smite the undead—though not explicitly doing so because that’s too close to blasphemy for his taste—a bright flash, they all fall down, and the priest charges out of the ring to go after the cultist. It’ll be right before intermission so you’ll be able to leave without any of the ‘zombies’ interacting with you post-match before you get back behind the curtain.”
There was another pause as she absorbed this. “Okay. I think I can work with that. Long as we get to have a decent match out of it, and the occasional lumber-zombie spots, it’ll go over. All right, point me in the direction of my opponent and we’ll start putting something together.”
To her credit, the match did end up being passable, if largely forgettable despite the poor acting abilities of the zombies at ringside. She left the warehouse four hundred dollars richer that night, and headed towards the northern suburbs. A friend was letting her crash at her place for a week until she was needed by Level Up, and a week in one spot could give her a couple more gigs besides if they came on short notice.
The grind continues, ever so slowly. Least this time I’ll be able to leave the city and not be wrecked on the way out!
Her last thought was that for as wacky as some of the Level Up roster were, at least zombies weren’t on their radar…not yet, anyway, and she prayed they’d never make an appearance at all.
** ~~ ** ~~ ** ~~ **
YouTube transcript
Uploaded to channel “NocturnalSonata”
May 16, 2022, 8:11 p.m.
There is nothing fancy about the promo video this week, just Nocturne standing in front of a plain wall, looking at the camera and speaking. Nocturne Prime she isn’t, after all.
”When I was told that Nocturne would be facing someone who made their Level Up debut at DOOM, Catalina Cortes was the last person I would have guessed out of all those who debuted to fill that role.
“You see, Catalina came in as the top woman of a long-dead company. That means precisely bupkiss in Level Up. I know that’s rich coming from a persona with a whole two wins in over a year in this company, you don’t have to roll your eyes at me and tell me this. Point is, we’ve been here busting our collective asses trying to achieve some sort of success in this place. What exactly has Catalina done since Carnage closed shop?
“So she came back as the most inept guest official ever in a match celebrating a dead promotion, that also featured someone else not in Level Up in the match, a wrestler who actually is, and a couple of wrestling legends on commentary…I know, I know. ‘Why are you throwing shade at the man who revealed himself as the Developer, as well as the man who ran the school you trained at?’ Tell me where I said anything disparaging about Trent Steel and Will Prydor in that last sentence. I’ll wait.
“No? Satisfied? Good. Now where was…oh, yeah. DOOM. So given the speed in which she tried to make her initial ten-count, her blindness at allowing weapons to be used, her blatant bias to decide suddenly that rope breaks were actually allowed, and the fact that she came to the ring carrying that dead promotion’s title belt like some sort of meaningful trophy in 2022, it occurred to me that Catalina Cortes was a little off on her calendar. She must have thought that Dia de los Muertos came in May, not November. Why else would she be showing up like a zombie from the grave to celebrate a company she seemed to not care much about save for the title and glory she could get from it?
“It’s time for a reality check, Miss Cortes. Being an official inside that ring is a far cry from actually competing. And while the Nocturne Collective may not be the most successful bunch in Level Up, we make damn sure that you’re going to work for the privilege of beating us. Ask Jack Sullivan how much of a fight she got at the hands of someone she expected to beat easily. Ask anyone who’s had to face one of us in the ring, and they’ll tell you that there’s more to us that you might think. We will not go quietly into that good night. You’re going to have to do more than just simply show up to collect a paycheck if you want your hand raised at the end of the night, Miss Cortes.
“I’m just left to wonder—do you even care that much to make an effort, or are you just going to coast on the coattails of a promotion dead and gone, and let that take you back into the obscurity from which you’ve lived this last year?”
